Post-E3 Software outlook

[liolio]

Game of the show to some of the hardcore, maybe.

I dont think Uncharted 2 is just going to sell gangbusters. No question in my mind it wont. It'll sell nicely enough, but it's not a hardware mover. It's in the wrong genre for one.

I think the list, minus some puzzling exceptions, serves to reinforce a good point..the best selling PS360 game this fall will be ODST, even though it's getting not as much attention from the media.

Of course if you carry that logic further, New Super Mario should probably be #1, and God of War 3 should be lower (def below FF13). Again God of War 3 is hyped online and in the media, but I dont think it's going to sell huge (the past GoW titles weren't particularly exceptional sellers, I'm pretty sure). It will probably sell well, but not huge.

In regard to Super mario and every other results, thing will move till release, especially in regard to wii owners who may not be the most informed type of gamers. Last minute marketing pushes can help in this regard. By the way it looks like like they are doing test pretty often, so may be we will have more leaks. (it seems that their awareness and intend index doesn't work as I thank).

Kind of related, they have track the effect of Activition giving up on the brand CoD for Modern Warfare 2: a report is availalble here

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Game of the show to some of the hardcore, maybe.

DJ12 meant the official 'game of the show' according to the Game Critics award, voted by 29 US gaming media journals...

Which of course doesn't necessarily represent the buying public. One could check previous years' winners and see how they sold.

 

[liolio]

If my memory's right it is LBP which didn't sell a lot thus it showed legs.

 

[upnorthsox]

It's in the link:

2008 Best of show:

Fallout3

2007:

Rock Band

2006:

Wii
Best console game: Gears of War

2005:

Spore
Best console game: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

2004:

PSP
Best console game: Halo2

2003:

Half-Life2

2002:

DoomIII
Best console game: The Legend of Zelda

2001:

Gamecube
Best console game: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

 

[liolio]

Now that I'm 33 years old I may have learn in the mean time that I should not trust my memory...

 

[liolio]

Gamasutra has an updated chart

There are two big misses imho Uncharted and Forza3 still didn't managed to make it till the first 25 places.

 

[zed]

Like I said before Im of the belief that lists like this + first day sales etc are terrible as it shows
the influence of marketting hype + not actual game quality.
Personally if I had a stake in it Ild be more happy with a game that only sold 10% during its first week + just keep on selling because of word of mouth

 

[obonicus]

This list is BS. God of War II is above MW2? (Disclaimer: I favor the former above the latter, but I live on Planet Earth, where MW2 is going to be the highest-selling game of the year and probably outpace GoW3 in 2010 too.)

 

[liolio]

This list is BS. God of War II is above MW2? (Disclaimer: I favor the former above the latter, but I live on Planet Earth, where MW2 is going to be the highest-selling game of the year and probably outpace GoW3 in 2010 too.)

I think you don't want to understand how this pool works.
It's interesting to track evolution as release are getting closer, call of duty as actually goes up as the CoD has been reintroduced, MW2 is actually second.
And the chart will evolved again between now and October/November as advertising and viral campaign kick in. It will also evolved after this fall before Gow3 release (or whatever game).
I hope will have a lot more charts from gamasutra till this fall to see what is the trend for a given IP how it translate in real world sales.
Nullifying a pool result because it includes results for Ip to be released way more than six months from now is a bit stretched. Things evolves this kind of pool track evolutions.

 

[obonicus]

I think you don't want to understand how this pool works.
It's interesting to track evolution as release are getting closer, call of duty as actually goes up as the CoD has been reintroduced, MW2 is actually second.
And the chart will evolved again between now and October/November as advertising and viral campaign kick in. It will also evolved after this fall before Gow3 release (or whatever game).
I hope will have a lot more charts from gamasutra till this fall to see what is the trend for a given IP how it translate in real world sales.
Nullifying a pool result because it includes results for Ip to be released way more than six months from now is a bit stretched. Things evolves this kind of pool track evolutions.

And I'm saying this trending is meaningless if it doesn't translate into anything tangible, such as sales. And as it stands, it will not. So it's just numerical masturbation, it's just charts for charts' sake.

Fact is, Activision has figured out a way to do an end-run around the press and they're pretending they're still relevant.

 

[liolio]

If your point is that survey/pool are useless, then I agree to disagree.
Pool/survey are useful tools in a lot of domains.

As for translating in real sales, as for elections for example results are becoming more meaningful the closer your from release. People are getting more serious about what they really want to buy, there are previews, word to mouth about them, add campaigns etc.

It would help a lot to have more titles this time around, I would like to know the trend for a game as Batman asylum. In the last chart we had (datas for two weeks in june) it appears it had moved the 29th rank to 45. I would bet it has gone even lower. The trend is bad, their have been quiet some buzz about the game but way too early it somehow has gotten old even before release.
So for sales I think they won't be stellar or to the level of what they should have been. Publisher studying those survey and some others is likely to think that they made wrong move during their teasing campaign, they show too much too early (the game has pushed back on top of that, not sure). 29th was good for a new IP if you take in account that the chart include super AAA titles to be release in way latter.
You can do the same for games likely to be more popular success, Madden has gain mindshare on the 360 and lost ground on the ps3.
We will see how sale will turn in regard to instal based for example.

To me datas are useful this way, absolute value may not that be relevant but you spot trend, you can also speak about materialized or not materialized potential for an IP. But trend is the more important thing as politicians know trend are really difficult to reverse.
Shortly the more datas we will have the more we will see how relevant they are. I hope we will have more as the most relevant cases for me would be for games to be release in 2010 how we will know how the trend as evolve on an significant period and how that translate in sales.

EDIT
gamasutra is about to release result of this survey every month till fall 2009, thus I guess we will have to consider a renaming for this thread.
EDIT 2
For Cod MW2 as pointed out by gamasutra, the preorder index on the 360 is the highest of the top 100, for the ps3 they don't say but it is second in the limited chart we had.

EDIT 3
Actually it would nice if they provide a 50 titles chart and why they are it, they should offer a excel version of the chart as it would be interesting to sort the chart based on the different index they track... no just kidding (I'm just too lazy to do it my self ).

 

[rekator]

Gamasutra has an updated chart

There are tow bif misses imho Uncharted and Forza3 still didn't managed to make it till the first 25 places.

This survey is for US only, I think?

I'm very surprised by the difference for MW2 on 360 and PS3…
For FM3 and Drake's if I remember well they selled more than half on EU, near 2/3, so don't really surprised to not show them on a US survey.
And Halo is really a Killer's sells… don't out your game when a Halo game is here, he take all the gamer's money!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

And I'm saying this trending is meaningless if it doesn't translate into anything tangible, such as sales. And as it stands, it will not. So it's just numerical masturbation, it's just charts for charts' sake.

Fact is, Activision has figured out a way to do an end-run around the press and they're pretending they're still relevant.

It may not be directly relevant to end sales of the games in question, however, it can be indirectly relevant.

As it respents current awareness of a product as of the time the chart was compiled, savy marketting people can use it as another data point to determine where to allocate marketing resources.

Likewise, it's an interesting look at the general awareness of a product as it stands now and to see how that awareness changes as you get closer to release.

In general, awareness seems to track pretty closely to install base. With some exceptions. Like FF XIII for example. Not entirely surprising however, considering the dearth of RPGs on PS3 combined with Playstation having been home territory for the FF series for quite a few years now. But interesting none-the-less.

Regards,
SB

 

[liolio]

Gamasutra has new figures avalaible here Once again they only provide too limited data in regard to what they offered in the first rendition of this survey (top25 instead of 50).
By the way it looks like I may have missed some of their news, to bad I wanted to see how the trend for Batman asylum evloved it was going down from june to july and I would have be nice to see what the number was like before its launch as the game sold really well.
Anyway Uncharted has made a nice jump and that even before more review had been published. Now with outstanding reviews and word to mouth I think that the game may stay high in the list, Naughty is likely to be successful in properly installing this franchise in costumers mind, I hope it looks like their work more than deserve it